The Self-Aware Vice Principals Is the Best TV Show About Awful Men

The central conflict of Vice Principals is a real "whoever wins, everyone else loses"-type situation. Although Danny McBride's loudmouth Neal Gamby has been a more sympathetic figure than Walton Goggins' vicious and sociopathic Lee Russell, there's no denying that neither of these men deserve to be employed by an institution of learning, let alone allowed to sit in the chair of principal. These two may be temporary allies in their war against Dr. Belinda Brown, but make no mistake: In the end, it's going to come down to these two monsters battling it out, and everyone in their wake is going to get pulled into the mess.

Like any dick-measuring contest, like any example of toxic masculinity, the women in orbit around Gamby and Russell are getting the worst of it.

At the center of it all is Principal Brown, who has been on the receiving end of constant abuse since the moment she walked into this series, and "The Foundation of Learning" finds her dealing with a major blow. In a brilliantly evil scheme concocted by Gamby and Russell, Brown finds herself opening up a new front against a popular English teacher and a massive order of missing textbooks…textbooks that are only missing because her vice principals ensured they were missing. It all ends poorly, with the books turning up at just the right moment to humiliate Brown and earn her a few new enemies within her own school and on the school board.

HBO

But the mistreatment of Vice Principals' women extends beyond the borders of Gamby and Russell's little war of humiliation and sabotage. Russell can't even share a room with his Asian mother-in-law without shrieking in her face. Gamby can't go a few minutes without mistreating the new office receptionist and his idea of an apology is informing her that he's sorry that she's making him be so harsh.

Then there's poor Janelle Gamby (Maya G. Love), whose newfound love of motocross drives her father to try the hobby out for himself. Not because he actually enjoys it and wants his daughter to be happy, but because he can't stand the thought of her bonding with her stepfather, Ray. No child deserves to be caught in the crossfire between exes who hate each other, but no child especially deserves to be used as pawn in her father's quest to feel better about his own masculinity. The soft-spoken, mild-mannered, and infinitely patient Ray (played with understated deadpan by the reliably great character actor Shea Whigham) is the ultimate foil not only to Gamby, but to the show his character appears in—he's a good guy and a straight shooter and someone who actually takes notice of the people in his life.

Courtesy of HBO

And as the events of "The Foundation of Learning" make clear, Ray is very much an anomaly. Bill Hayden (Mike O'Gorman), the history teacher we first met during that skin-crawling field trip to historic Charleston a few episodes hack, has been shacking up with Amanda Snodgrass (Georgia King). Despite a friendlier disposition and a more measured approach to dealing with students in his school, Bill is just as toxic as Russell and Gamby in his core. He casually disposes of Amanda when he's done with her and does it with a smile. He moves onto his new teaching assistant without skipping a beat. He's the kind of quiet monster that pushes Amanda into the arms of Gamby, whose painful humiliation on the motocross track makes him look like the better alternative in that "wounded beast who only needs a hug" kind of way.

How does one mine comedy, even dark and deeply unpleasant comedy, out of awful men being terrible to the women in their lives?

Like so much of the comedy in Vice Principals, this is tricky territory for series creator and frequent director Jody Hill to navigate. How does one mine comedy, even dark and deeply unpleasant comedy, out of awful men being terrible to the women in their lives? It requires a willingness to be misunderstood—to appreciate Hill's work is to acknowledge that he never approves of his characters and never endorses their actions. No one is better at directing badly behaved men (and no one is better at playing them than Danny McBride), but Hill doesn't cheer on his characters. If there's a celebratory tone on display in Vice Principals (and in The Foot Fist Way and Observe and Report and Eastbound & Down), it's deeply ironic, the internal feelings of the characters bleeding into the filmmaking itself. Simply put, Hill and McBride make art about shitty people. They craft comedy out of real sons of bitches. In an age where so much entertainment is going out of its way to make audiences feel comfortable, to accommodate "fandom" and make everyone feel welcome, something as abrasive and crude as Vice Principals is a satisfying slap to the face. It leaves a mark when it's done with you. It doesn't want you to love its characters. It only wants you to watch, mouth agape, at how far these men can go. It would be disingenuous to ignore their collateral damage.

Vice Principals is nothing if not self-aware. After all, "The Foundation of Learning" also features Dr. Brown walking in on Russell spitting in her coffee. She may not know the whole truth, but she knows enough. After all, the series has always depicted her as a smart and capable women braving an assault from forces she cannot see. Now, she's armed. Her enemy has a face and few things crumple quite like a man puffed up on testosterone and hatred alone.

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